The present invention relates to a merchandise sales control system and, more particularly, to a merchandise sales control system that can preset the unit prices of commodities in a plurality of electronic cash registers provided independently of one another and, in addition, can obtain totalled data such as gross sales of the commodities.
In registering sale proceeds in a cash register, it has been very troublesome and liable to error to depress amount keys every time when each commodity was sold, or to depress a multiplication key and numeral keys if a plurality of commodities were sold, and in addition to depress commodity keys for each transaction. For this reason, therefore, a cash register with a unit-price memory has been in practical use, in which the unit price is previously preset for each commodity and thereby registration is made simply by depressing a commodity key corresponding to the commodity sold. In this case, the operation of unit-price presetting is made for each commodity by depressing numeral keys corresponding to amount keys and then by depressing the commodity key; and the data once preset are kept stored in the memory unless they are intentionally erased. Therefore, the unit prices of such commodities as medicines stable in price may be used for a long time if once preset; however, in the case of such commodities as perishable foodstuffs subject to daily price change, the unit prices for the day must be preset in each cash register before work is started, and as a result, the time required for unit-price presetting is inevitably increased. In addition, prices are changed in many cases, for instance, when commodities are purchased for stock according to the judgement of the branch office itself in addition to the instructions from the head office or the control center, when commodities are on sale at a discount or at special prices on a special bargain day or when those discount prices are returned to the normal prices, when commodities left unsold are on sale at a discount or when those discount prices are returned to the normal prices, and when strategic prices are adopted according to the judgement of the branch office itself in rivalry with the other dealers in the same commercial district. Accordingly, it can be said that the frequency of unit-price presetting is very high and therefore so much increased are the possibility of making mistakes in inputting operations and the frequency of performing troublesome checking operations.
There is also provided a system in which each cash register is connected to a computer or the like installed in the control center thereby enabling omission of the unit-price presetting operation for each individual cash register. Such a system, however, is inevitably large in scale and very expensive and, in addition, cannot perform such small-scale operations as presetting of unit prices for each register of each branch or each shop; therefore, the unit prices of commodities liable to price changes must be preset in each cash register by operating its own keyboard.
It is also very time-consuming and laborious to carry out, after registration, the data-totalling or -collecting operation for each cash register or collectively for all the cash registers. In view of this fact, there has been provided a system in which, after completion of the work for the day, a data-totalizer or -collector is connected to the cash registers one by one for data-totalling or -collection. In such a system, however, the data collection cannot be performed at a time and therefore is also accompanied by some troubles.